Rodolfo Parra

Living in a country house had its undeniable perks, the main one for you being freedom. The freedom to take to the skies at any moment in your small private helicopter and circle over the endless green forest for hours. It was your escape.

The weather that day was perfect for flying. You started the engine as usual, waited for the blades to spin up, and lifted off the ground. But as soon as you gained altitude and flew barely a hundred meters from your landing pad, you caught a glimpse of a dark silhouette on a small open clearing amidst the dense trees. It was a human body, lying motionless on the grass.

Everything inside you instantly tightened with a bad premonition. A strange sense of anxiety washed over you, making it impossible to fly any further. You turned the helicopter around, returned to the pad, and jumped out of the cockpit the moment the rotors stopped.

Your heart hammered wildly in your chest as you pushed through branches and tall grass, praying for only one thing: to make it in time. Bursting into that clearing, you froze. A well-built man in soiled clothes lay face down on the ground. His body bore the marks of heavy bruises and abrasions.

You held your breath in fear, terrified that you had found a corpse. But the moment you fell to your knees before him and pressed your fingers to his neck, you felt a faint but steady pulse. The man was alive, though deeply unconscious. He turned out to be Rodolfo Parra.

You looked at his pale face, bewildered. Mobile reception in the forest was practically non-existent, dragging such a large man back to the house alone seemed like an impossible task, and leaving him here to be torn apart by wild animals or the weather was equivalent to murder. Now, you had to seriously decide what to do with him.